One of those foo-foo film sites. By Glenn Kenny

August 23, 2011

The trouble with movie stars

I remember the thought occurring to me well into a screening of, believe it or not, Milos Forman's 2006 Goya's Ghosts. I was thinking, this is Forman's most interesting movie in quite a while, it's not working entirely, but he's making some bold choices, and it's going to get lambasted, and mainly because of Natalie Portman. It wasn't that she was bad, it was just that she was so...Natalie Portman that her character had trouble registering, and her character was the real key to the film. And I thought, I wonder how this film will play in 15 or twenty years, when Natalie Portman's Portman-ness isn't quite so nearly palpable in the zeitgeist. Will the picture be able to make itself felt more truly by then?

I recall these thoughts as internet film writers the world over go slightly batty tripping over themselves to agree with an individual who they'd characterize as either full of it or an insensitive boor 99 percent of the rest of the time. I refer, of course, to Sean Penn, who tried to express to the French publication Le Figaro his misgivings about Terrence Malick's recent The Tree of Life without seeming peevish or that he was speaking altogether from wounded vanity or ego (there is a slight distinction between the two). I refer you to Richard Brody's ruminations on the statement, as Richard's post is both admirably civil and sufficiently eccentric to have earned the impatient dismissal of the renowned esthete John Nolte.

Whether you sympathize with Penn or not, there is the fact that with both audiences and critics, the announcement of Sean Penn's presence in a movie brings with it an expectation that Penn will not only appear in a large portion of the film, but that he will do things in it other than sit or stand around looking deeply perturbed. That he will perform Feats of Acting that audiences and critics have come to expect from hi, whether they be chameleonic or merely steeped in emotional intensity. Penn's is the movie star iconography of the master thespian, and while Malick's film does many things, it does not honor Penn's iconography, at least not in any conventional way.

By contrast, Mike Nichols' 1965 film adaptation of Edward Albee's sensational play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? isn't just that, or maybe even that, at all; it's also or primarily a film about MOVIE STARS acting in an adaptation of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Specifically, about Elizabeth Taylor throwing away everything that makes her "Elizabeth Taylor" and still being Elizabeth Taylor anyway. How aware was Mike Nichols of this? Very aware, I'd say; aware enough so that almost 40 years later his film adaptation of Patrick Mawber's sensational play Closer was a film about Julia Roberts talking really, really dirty. People who complain about Judy Garland having been too old to play Esther Blodgett in Cukor's 1954 A Star is Born are missing the point in twelve different ways, as the film is about NOTHING BUT Judy Garland playing Esther Blodgett, everyone else's impeccable contributions notwithstanding. Just as North By Northwest is Hitchcock making the ultimate Cary Grant film by Hitchcock. And so on.

Ignore star iconography at your film's peril, as Joseph Losey learned with his almost impossibly muddled 1968 Secret Ceremony, in which he had La Liz and Mia Farrow enact proto-ur-Lynchian encounters with no regard for the extradiegetic resonances of the screen personalities, treating them as mere performers. Actually, Losey didn't learn, not right away at least, as he next made the ineffable Boom! with Liz and Dick entirely in sub-surreal earnest.

As for Malick, in his latter-day films he doesn't so much ignore star iconography as he behaves as if it doesn't exist. And again, there is a slight distinction between the two. It's clear that he casts for presence, and it's pretty clear in Tree of Life that he wanted what Sean Penn's got. He just wants it differently. Which perhaps inevitably (or is that so?) creates a disjoint with an audience conditioned to expect, or want, a certain Penn-ness. Something not dissimilar is in effect with Malick's ostensible comeback film, 1998's The Thin Red Line, which was so star-studded, and within which certain of the stars made appearances much more fleeting than one would expect from such names within the context of a "star studded" film. Hence, the first viewing of the picture one might ostensibly spending an inordinate amount of time noting, "There's Travolta! There's Clooney!" and so on. It's only with several viewings that one can break through that. Just as it might take several viewings of Tree of Life to fully get past the circumstances of Penn's manifestation in the film. Add to this the fact that Milick arguably needs these names in order to get his films made, and that talents of Penn's caliber are falling over themselves to work with Malick, and this particular conundrum gets knottier still.

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I think, at least in The Thin Red Line, by having so many movie stars appear so fleetingly, it makes any one individual star kind of meaningless. This is important for a war film, as very quickly you stop ranking characters' importance based on how famous the actor is (and, thus, what role they'll play in the battles, who'll die, etc.) You stop evaluating the characters based on preconceived notions of Hollywood storytelling because the casting follows no such logic. This may pull some people out of the film, of course, but I like being disoriented and a little confused the first time I watch a movie. And for a metaphysical war film, I gather that's rather the point.

As to Penn on Malick; as Jim Emerson pointed out in his blog post, Penn still recommends the film (if, as he says, you have no preconceived notions going in), and he also wasn't sure where Malick was going with THIN RED LINE at first. I think both movies turned out fine.

As for the point you're going for here in general; where do you stand on James Stewart in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE? Do you see it as Ford's using Stewart in the way that, as you say, Hitchcock used Cary Grant in NORTH BY NORTHWEST and Judy Garland was used in her version of A STAR IS BORN? Because, while that does make his casting more sense than otherwise, I still have some difficulty with it because Stewart's work with Mann and Hitchcock in the 50's had put some distance between the more idealistic characters Ford might have been playing on with Stewart's character here.

Also, re: the supposed distractingness of star cameos in THE THIN RED LINE. I never quite understood this. I guess I can see that Clooney's showing up briefly at the end might be distracting, but I don't see how Travolta computes: He shows up early on and has one fairly big scene; for all the audience knows at that point, he might continue to have a big part in the rest of the movie. In order to be actively distracted by the fleeting nature of his appearance, you'd have to spend at least part of the rest of the film thinking, "Hey, when's Travolta coming back?" And if that's the case then the film probably isn't working for you anyway.

Somewhat (un-)related to this, one common criticism I heard from friends at the time of TTRL's release was that they often had trouble telling who was who onscreen. Not in terms of voiceover, but more in terms of hey-which-of-our-thin-dark-haired-protagonists-just-threw-that-grenade. I said at the time that this would cease to be a problem in a few years once Jim Caviezel and Ben Chaplin (and maybe even Adrien Brody) became household names. Alas, poor Ben Chaplin never quite took off, but I'm happy to see that, thanks to Caviezel's later career trajectory, this is no longer a problem with the film...if it ever was.

Is it possible to have really, really enjoyed and admired The Tree of Life, but also believing that it could have benefited from even as little as 5-10 more minutes spent with Penn, or a few more lines?

The bottom line is that we know there are TONS of material sitting around, and that judging by how fickle he seemed to be with The New World it's certainly reasonable to entertain the notion of seeing another cut of The Tree of Life before all is said and done. Or maybe not, since he's editing another film and gearing up to do another one.

But again, going back to the example of The New World, it's safe to say that Malick's initial release cut isn't necessarily the optimum one.

Since people are already talking about a much-longer cut of TREE OF LIFE being prepared, there's some reason to assume this is now just becoming part of Malick's process. However, it's also worth noting that TREE OF LIFE was done editing and locked for nearly a year before its release (they finished in September 2010 and then just waited for the film to be released). That's a different situation from THE THIN RED LINE and THE NEW WORLD, which were being cut right up until (and even right after, for TNW) their release dates.

Then again, it's pretty much impossible to say that Malick is pleased with any cut of the film, since, according to at least one of his editors that I spoke to, he probably never watched it all the way from beginning to end.

I kinda/sorta didn't dislike GOYA'S GHOSTS either. But one thing I have noted about Forman's films is that on more than one occasion he has erred (at least to me) when it came to casting/directing significant female roles. Sometimes he does well, e.g., VALMONT. Other times, I have been left scratching my head over his choices (and the actresses always seem miscast in identical ways).

As for star iconography: I recall an older tradition where brief appearances would be announced to an audience with a credit such as "and Henry Fonda as The President" (or other authority figure that he happened to be playing) which set up audience expectation for a one-scene appearance (maybe two) that was narratively significant, but not extensive in terms of screen time.

The way stars are listed today does raise a viewer's expectation of spending at least some time with the actor throughout the course of the movie. While not a fan of TToL, I thought Malick used Penn’s contribution to good effect, especially in dialectic with Pitt’s performance.

One last thought as I was spell checking my post: in the past, it could be advertised: “Elizabeth Taylor as you have never seen her before” – with the actress engaging in variations on previous performances: isn’t Martha just Angela Vickers after she loses George Eastman, starts to drink in secret, and ends up marrying a substitute George? In present times, the tagline might be: “Sean Penn as intense as ever, but in bite-sized, widely spread out portions” – the performance is the same, but how it is deployed within the film is where the variations occur, i.e., it may well be that Penn has as much screen time in TToL as Fonda does in IN HARM’S WAY.

Malick’s use of Penn reminded me of Jerome Robbins casting the dynamo Edward Villella in “Watermill” and then having him stand around and not do much. Villella held the stage by presence alone and Robbin's purpose was accomplished in that regard, but that didn’t mean it was a great idea to begin with.

I take the point about Virginia Woolf, but I also note that Burton gave a real performance (and a most generous one, propping up his wife at every turn). Maybe at the time it was all about Elizabeth but it seems to me now that without Burton there's no movie.

If you haven't seen WHO'S AFRAID (etc.) for a while, it's well worth renting the disc just to hear Stephen Soderbergh basically interviewing Mike Nichols on the commentary track. I'm pretty sure Nichols claims that Burton was always in awe of Liz as a film actress, which Nichols came to appreciate, as well.

While I agree that the film absolutely cannot work without Burton's performance, I think it's difficult for him and other British stage actors of roughly the same vintage to avoid the whiff of theatricality in their film acting (and especially in such a stagey/texty piece). It's really in the third act that I think Taylor starts to leave Burton in the dust... just compare how she conveys Martha's fragility leading up to the tour-de-force breakdown to the scene where George has a bit of a weeping jag (about which Nichols says, "he didn't want to do it like Olivier").

In re: Forman, I always thought VALMONT vastly superior to DANGEROUS LIAISONS. But hell, I also think CRUEL INTENTIONS is better than DL.

For my money Soderbergh brings out the best in DVD commentary. CATCH-22 with Nichols and THE LIMEY, OUT OF SIGHT, THE THIRD MAN, SECRETARIAT, OCEANS 13, BILLY BUDD all very good. Although, the jury is still out---I haven't yet heard the commentary on the fox-Lorber JULES AND JIM dvd.

Yeah, "Seabiscuit" I think it must be. I've actually got "Catch-22" on my coffee table, having FINALLY read the book and wanting to catch up with the movie and the circumstances of its creation and such. I'm surprised/disappointed some critic hasn't written more extensively on the stylistic links between Steven and his two pals/quasi-mentors from '60s filmmaking, e.g., Nichols and Lester. I suppose I'd be a good man for the job, but, you know... Anyway, I CAN'T be the only critic who saw the affinities between "Girlfriend Experience" and "Petulia."

Surely announcing Brad Pitt as your star carries the same expectations as casting Sean Penn, if not more so?

Mike Nichols must have been very aware of the tensions between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, as well as the audience's expectations when seeing the two of them on screen together. It must have added a level of heft to the steady disintegration of the marriage in the film. And yet, there is no sense that either actor is actually playing themselves, whereas in Closer, that sense is ever-present for all the actors except Clive Owen.

He DOES get around, doesn't he? While I'm flattered by Haice's kind words, and while I certainly don't want to give any credence to a certain commenter's ridiculous supposition that I "hang" with the filmmaker, there's too much professional intertwining/engagement in play for me to make him or his work a subject at the moment.

One of the things I love about Nichols' WAoVW? is his introductory shot of Burton and Taylor, basically a shock reveal via lighting cue of the two of them looking terrible, to tell the audience he knows what he's doing on this point.

A couple of years ago I saw a Polish film called 'Before Twilight' ('Jeszcze nie wieczór', directed by Jacek Bławut), which was set in a retirement home for elderly actors, the casting gimmick being that almost every part was played by a genuine stage and screen megastar of decades gone by (pre-war, in some cases).

Naturally, I wouldn't have had a clue about this if I hadn't had someone next to me helpfully whispering who they were, and even with those 'footnotes' I'm sure most of the casting significance went way over my head. Although someone took the trouble to add English subtitles, it was clearly a film primarily aimed at domestic audiences, and middle-aged to elderly audiences at that. (Though I do remember enjoying it very much).